Focus on what’s underneath, not just the surface.

As an entrepreneur or CEO, you may have invested in top-tier tools, hired experts, and spent countless hours crafting the perfect marketing strategy. But when you look at your results, you think: why are we not growing? You feel stuck; the money is spent, the time is gone, and the results are just not there.

This leads to frustration. Why is it not working? Why are your marketing efforts not reflected in your sales results? You did everything right, but do you need something else? The last thing you want to do is to pour more money into what seems to be a black hole. So, you remain stagnant while your competition thrives.

The answer is to understand what causes your customers to buy.

This does not involve trends and tactics, but the real driving force behind almost every sale. Read on, as I explain this further in today’s post.

Believe me, I have been there.

There was a time when I was in your shoes. I founded SUM Digital already 8 years ago. We worked with HubSpot, we followed the top growth strategies, and we did everything the market told us to do. Still, something was not adding up, because results were inconsistent. We could not understand why some clients would soar and others would stall. At points we questioned our strategies and wondered what it was we failed to see.

We tried everything, but no matter how hard we pushed, we just could not gain full control of the outcomes. Then I came across Bob Moesta and his Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) theory.

What he said impressed me: “Do not confuse correlation with causation.”?

It also made me realize I was doing something wrong. By only looking at the correlation between marketing and success, I failed to understand the cause behind why my customers were making decisions. It was a revelation which changed everything for our business and our clients.

What was this big idea? It is about discovering what drives your customers to buy instead of chasing trends. Marketing success does not come from copying what others are doing. It comes from understanding what is driving your customers’ buying decisions and adjusting your business to that.

Understanding the soil.

You cannot grow healthy crops if the soil lacks nutrients. You give them the exact amount of water and place them in the sunniest spot. But if the cause of growth (the health of the soil) is ignored, they will not grow. In marketing, we often focus on water and sunlight but neglect the soil. We invest in better tools, more content and flashier tactics, but we fail to understand what it is that drives our customers to make a purchase. The JTBD theory is about understanding the soil and getting to the root of the problem.

Let me explain this with an example. For one of our clients, a SaaS company, we initially invested in the usual tactics of ad spend, content strategy, and email funnels. When that did not work, we took a step back and used the JTBD framework. This revealed to us that their customers were not looking for a better software interface. Their problem had to do with wasted time during daily operations. When we shifted the message and product focus to emphasize time-saving automation, their sales skyrocketed.

News flash: your customers do not care about tactics.

What is it your customer wants? They want a solution to their problem and they are looking for the perfect business to make that happen. They do not care which flashy programs or tactics you use to help them achieve their goals. A common mistake that business owners make is.

JTBD is not time-consuming.

An objection I often hear is: I need results now, this all sounds very time-consuming. But as with so many things in business (and life), finding the cause actually saves you time in the long run. You can either decide to pinpoint the cause of the problem, or to keep fighting fires until you run out of resources.?

One of our B2B consulting clients came to us asking for a complete rebrand. Instead, we helped them adjust just a few key elements of their messaging and focused on their client’s deeper pain points. Getting to the crux of the issue showed them that the solution was much simpler than they anticipated. The result was a 40% increase in client retention and a lot of time (and expenses) saved.?

Conclusion.

As always, I will leave you with another story. One of our clients, a B2B software company, was on the verge of giving up on a product launch. They had tried everything - ads, influencer marketing, cold outreach - and nothing was working. When we used the JTBD framework, we discovered that their customers did not just want a product; they wanted a partner to solve a bigger business challenge. We shifted the entire approach from product-centric to solution-centric. Needless to say, their launch turned out to be a big success after all.